Author: TheConversation

By Patrick van Esch, Associate Professor of Marketing, Coastal Carolina University; and Yuanyuan (Gina) Cui, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Coastal Carolina University Imagine attending a funeral where the person who has died speaks directly to you, answering your questions and sharing memories. This happened at the funeral of Marina Smith, a Holocaust educator who died in 2022. Thanks to an AI technology company called StoryFile, Smith seemed to interact naturally with her family and friends. The system used prerecorded answers combined with artificial intelligence to create a realistic, interactive experience. This was not just a video, it was something...

By Cassandra Burke Robertson, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Professional Ethics, Case Western Reserve University; and Irina D. Manta, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law, Hofstra University A sweeping crackdown on immigration was the centerpiece of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. “On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program of criminals in the history of America,” Trump promised at a rally in Madison Square Garden in late October 2024. After winning, he suggested in a November 18 post on his social media site Truth Social that he...

By Beverly Moran, Professor Emerita of Law, Vanderbilt University The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a set of tax cuts Donald Trump signed into law during his first term as president, will expire on December 31, 2024. As Trump and Republicans prepare to negotiate new tax cuts in 2025, it is worth gleaning lessons from the president-elect’s first set of cuts. The 2017 cuts were the most extensive revision to the Internal Revenue Code since the Ronald Reagan administration. The changes it imposed range from the tax that corporations pay on their foreign income to limits on the deductions...

By Michael J. Socolow, Professor of Communication and Journalism, University of Maine Most people agree that actual facts matter in such activities as debate, discussion and reporting. Once facts are gathered, verified, and distributed, informed decision-making can proceed in such important exercises as voting. But what happens when important, verified facts are published and broadcast widely, yet the resulting impact proves underwhelming – or even meaningless? If vital facts fail to affect the news audiences they intend to inform? This is the conundrum facing American journalism after November 5, 2024. As a former journalist, and a scholar of media...

By Tin Cheuk Leung, Associate Professor of Economics, Wake Forest University Late in December 2023, a former editor of “The New York Times,” dropped a bombshell in an article for “The Economist.” “The leadership of ‘The New York Times’ is losing control of its principles,” he wrote, saying slanted coverage at the institution is “pervasive.” In the article, Bennet talked about the pressures driving what he called “liberal bias” at one of the world’s most influential newspapers. While recounting his final days at “The New York Times” – he resigned amid controversy in 2020 over an op-ed by Republican...

By Amy Cooter, Director of Research, Academic Development, and Innovation at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, Middlebury President-elect Donald Trump has reaffirmed that once he takes office he plans to declare a national emergency and use the military on American streets to accomplish his promises to round up and deport millions of undocumented migrants. Many experts’ concerns about this program have included the facts that immigrants contribute enormous value to the U.S. economy and mass deportation would hurt food production, housing construction, and other crucial industries. Other scholars have analyzed how deportation traumatizes families. I have an...